Chapter 8: The Name Thomas Warned Me About
Thomas had mentioned Gerald Marsh exactly once.
It was a winter evening, two years before he di*d.
We were sitting in the living room of our flat in Durham, the news on with the sound low, and Thomas had a letter in his hand — an actual paper letter, which was unusual by then.
He read it twice.
He folded it.
He put it in his jacket pocket.
"Who was that from?" I asked.
He looked at me for a moment.
"Gerald Marsh.
You don't know him.
We worked together briefly, years ago, before I met you.
Property development." He paused.
"He wants to discuss the beach house."
"What about it?"
"Nothing that will happen," Thomas said.
He said it simply, without drama.
Then he changed the subject.
I had forgotten it entirely until I saw the name light up on Robert's phone.
I told Frank all of it.
He listened without interrupting.
When I finished, he made several notes and asked me to spell the name, which I did.
Then he asked: "Do you have any idea how Robert would know Gerald Marsh?"
"None," I said.
"Robert was a teenager when Thomas got that letter.
I don't know if they ever met."
"Megan?"
"I don't know."
Frank closed his notebook.
"I'll find out." He looked at Carol.
"I'd like to move on the preservation order today.
And I want a full company search on Blue Shore — directors, filing history, any associated entities.
If Gerald Marsh is connected, it'll show up."
Carol was already on her phone.
I drove back to the beach house in the early afternoon.
The sky had clouded over.
The water looked gray and heavy, the way it does before a storm rolls in off the Atlantic.
Robert's car was gone.
Megan's car was still in the driveway.
I went inside.
The house smelled of coffee and something else — a faint smell of paper, of the study.
I went directly down the hall.
The filing cabinet drawer was partially open.
I looked inside.
The original deed was back.
The mortgage discharge letter was back.
The insurance documents were back.
One thing was missing.
A letter.
Thomas's letter.
The one he had written to me six months before he di*d, which I had kept in that drawer because I could not throw it away and could not bear to read it too often.
It was handwritten, three pages, and at the end of it — I knew this without needing to check, because I had read it so many times that I knew it by heart — Thomas had written a single paragraph about the beach house.
About what it meant to him.
About what he wanted for me.
About his wishes for who should have it after I was gone.
It was not a legal document.
It was a letter.
It would not hold up in court the way a will would.
But it had his handwriting.
His words.
His expressed intention.
And someone had taken it.
I stood at the filing cabinet with one hand on the open drawer.
"I wondered when you'd check."
I turned around.
Megan was standing in the doorway of the study.
She had her arms crossed, her shoulder against the frame, her expression arranged into something that might have passed for calm if her eyes had matched it.
"Give me the letter, Megan."
"I don't know what letter you mean."
"Thomas's letter.
The handwritten one.
Three pages.
It was in this drawer with the deed."
"The drawer was empty when I returned the documents this morning."
"It was not."
She held my gaze.
"I can't help what was or wasn't there before I arrived, Margaret."
I walked toward her.
She didn't move from the doorway.
"I have a very good attorney," I said.
"And now a colleague of hers who handles fraud cases.
What you did with those signature pages is not a family matter anymore, Megan.
It is a legal matter.
And if that letter surfaces somewhere — in a court filing, in a company document, in anything connected to Dennis Hale or Blue Shore Holdings or Gerald Marsh — I will know exactly where it came from."
Something moved in her face.
Small, fast, gone.
She had not expected Gerald Marsh's name.
"Where did you hear that name?" she said.
"Does it matter?"
She pushed off from the doorframe.
She walked past me into the hallway.
I heard her pick up her bag.
I heard the front door open.
"Robert is coming back this evening," she said from the hallway.
"We should all sit down together and talk about this calmly."
"I agree," I said.
"Bring Dennis Hale."
The front door closed.
I went back to the filing cabinet.
I picked up the deed — my name, Thomas's name, both of us on a document signed on a bright September morning twenty-three years ago — and I held it in both hands.
Then I called Frank Aldred.
"She took a letter," I said.
"Thomas's letter.
Personal, handwritten, three pages.
It contained his expressed wishes about the property."
A pause.
"Did it name Robert as an heir?"
"It named me," I said.
"And it said the house should stay in the family as I saw fit.
His words exactly."
"Then she took it because she didn't want it found in a legal proceeding," Frank said.
"Margaret, this is no longer just a title dispute.
This is evidence removal.
I'm going to make another call."
He hung up.
May you like
I stood in the study with the deed in my hands.
Through the window, the first drops of rain hit the glass.
